Eglė Rindzevičiūtė: Could we admit we are robots?

What and who do people fear more – robots or migrants? How is our relationship with animals and other forms of life changing? How does this relationship determine our choices or even our destinies? We are discussing this with Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, PhD in Cultural Studies and Lecturer in Sociology at Kingston University. Rindzevičiūtė is one of the catalogue authors of the MO Museum exhibition Animal – Human – Robot, and in her article, she analyses the causes which have determined the migration of the Lithuanians. According to Rindzevičiūtė, among other reasons, Lithuanians were being driven abroad by the beef industry which was rapidly developing across the Atlantic and became a magnet for the Lithuanian workforce.

The catalogue of the exhibition Animal – Human – Robot currently on display at MO Museum also contains your text on emigration. Your observation that “it is not the idea of the nation but the processes of globalisation – from the meat industry to mining – that shape individual destinies” sounds very interesting. Could you elaborate on that?

This article came together unexpectedly and even spontaneously. I was reading a book by Egidijus Aleksandravičius “Willow Sprout” because I had to moderate the book’s presentation in Paris. While reading it, I realised that Aleksandravičius was writing a book about Lithuanian emigration, but the result was a book about the meat industry since most of the emigrants went to work in this industry. I was intrigued by this perspective on bio-history and I wanted to find out how the meat industry determined the nation spreading, returning, transforming and moving between villages and cities in Lithuania, as well as Lithuanians moving between Lithuania and Chicago, Argentina or Brazil. This enabled us to look at the Lithuanian history in the context of global processes and at the same time to think about our daily practices – how often do we eat meat, where it originated from, how and where we buy it and why we choose a certain kind of meat products. I even went to Biovela’s Facebook page and got acquainted with the discourse I had never thought of before.

And what is the relation of a human as one of a species to other animals? After all, we slaughter and eat some of them, while we love, care for and protect others. How is this perception changing and why?

For me personally, the topic of meat came partly in connection with my personal experiences. Some of my friends are vegans and I am more of a lifestyle vegetarian (I eat fish, sometimes a piece of cheese). As a result, vegetarianism and the values as well as attitudes behind it have become the subject of our conversations – we began to think about our own food choices, what products we consume, how we get them and where they come from.

From an ideological perspective, several years ago I read an essay by Alexander Solzhenitsyn about a woman who lived in a Russian kolkhoz village and raised a pig. All the other women in the kolkhoz did the same thing, but she looked after the pig and did not slaughter it. The entire village condemned her since it was incomprehensible to keep a pig and not slaughter it. This essay was written in 1960 and at the time such behaviour was inconceivable, irrational and unwise. There was a shortage of food everywhere and here this empathy for a pig. Of course, when the woman died, the villagers slaughtered the pig, but this entire story appeals to a completely different emotional relationship between a human and animal. Solzhenitsyn wrote the essay questioning humanity and the concept of it. Is an empathic contact with an animal an expression of a higher level of humanity?

Human’s impact on the environment, climate change, the ecological crisis, rising industrial consumption and the changing relationship between a human and nature – these are very hot topics currently. Popular books such as Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens also influence this. Ideas keep emerging that it is not a human who is at the centre of the universe or that humans are destroying everything only based on the illusion that they are in the centre of everything. Perhaps you can share some of the most relevant and recent global research on this topic?

Everyone is wondering – what is next? I would highlight two things. The future as a goal or the pursuit of a goal, and the future as consequences. This is the human irony and drama. Because we can set goals and the consequences come unanticipated. Especially when you see that the purpose was absurd. For example, as was the case with combustible fuels, an economy based on consumption. There was a single purpose but its consequences changed the world and the purpose itself lead to a disaster.

The most debated topic in the world today is the shift towards a more plant-based diet. This is a systemic change. The UK, for example, is a pioneer in this approach. Vegetarianism has been practised since the eighteenth century and there is a strong cultural openness to the idea.

Another issue that is currently very relevant is the wave of automation, robots and artificial intelligence systems. The debate on whether they could deprive people of their work has been going on for over 50 years and the same things continue bringing about fear. Of course, when new technologies are introduced, they exterminate some types of work but also create new ones. However, if a person is in a period of transition when he can no longer continue with his previous job and has not taken up or learned a new one, this becomes a huge social problem.

My colleague Barbara Czarniawska has written a fantastic study on how computerisation has changed the profession of journalists and how Reuters, as well as Italian and Swedish news agencies, continue functioning after new technologies have emerged. She is now writing a book on how robotisation was imagined before and how it is perceived now. The book poses a very interesting question: what do people fear more – robots or migrants? Who actually takes away the jobs? Either robots or migrants. However, if people were to make a choice it is still unclear what would the society choose.

After all, even in the UK, there was an ironic situation where most farmers in rural areas voted for Brexit. They reasoned their choice on the idea that seasonal immigrants lowered wage levels, locals did not want to work for little money, so they needed immigrants to leave and the prices to rise. But in reality, in five to ten years, none of these workers will be needed. Robotic agricultural equipment is expanding rapidly: there are already weeding robots, robots-strawberry pickers and sprayers. When you think about it, the country’s geopolitical situation is being reconsidered based on a very specific understanding of emigration and future economic prospects, without seeing any real trends.

And what are those trends? What kind of future are we to expect?

At this point, it really seems like nothing good will come out of it. Unless rapid political measures are agreed on how to decarbonise energy systems and stop climate change, it is clear that there is nothing positive to expect. Western Europe and Lithuania, as part of the EU, will experience a relatively mild period. But decarbonisation will lead to huge political instability. Some countries, such as Russia, will be among the losers.

Do you think there is enough talk about the future in Lithuania? Are not we too late to finally get concerned?

I cannot analyse the discourse in the media because I just do not follow it. But as far as I can see from private, personal conversations and other literature I have the impression that Lithuania, like Scandinavia, is very receptive to trends and innovations. In Lithuania, new things, such as veganism, sustainable design and organic farming in certain sections of society are developing faster than in some Western countries.

However, there should be much more intensive investment in sustainable infrastructure and sustainable businesses.

To your opinion, how does technology affect the present world and its possible future visions?

Famous Vilnius-based theorist Czarniawska analysed how humans treated robots in journalism and fiction. Her analytical principle is very simple and insightful: the bad things that robots do to humans and that humans do to robots.

Czarniawska demonstrates that technology is positive when it frees people from DDD work – work that is dangerous, dirty and dumb. Both the vacuum cleaner and the industrial robot protect people from injuries and the time otherwise spent cleaning the floor can be used for reading a book or doing something enjoyable, like visiting a museum. Technologies become dangerous to humanity when robots become capable of performing tasks other than DDD.

Some middle-class jobs are predicted to disappear. The functions performed by accountants, lawyers, notaries, even family physicians, are relatively easy to automate and will be replaced by computer and sensory programmes. Maybe in the future, we will have sensors and smart home environments which will monitor all our bioprocesses, diagnose diseases or disorders and automatically refer a person to a specialist. This is good news for someone who does not want to sit in a queue at a clinic but not for those who have planned a career as a family doctor.

And there is the other side of the coin. There is not a single programme that can do all these tasks: play chess, drive a car, make tea and diagnose diseases. Meanwhile, a human doctor can. There will be no such universal system in the near future. There is a certain technical threshold that is very difficult to cross. So an educated person as a multifunctional system is safe.

MO Museum is currently provoking its visitors by asking who owns the future: animal, human or robot? How would you answer this question?

Probably a hybrid, because a human is, of course, also an animal. We carry millions of bacteria. Without technology, we cannot function as a part of the society – a pencil as a writing tool, after all, is a technology. But the question of who does a human belong to – the animals or robots – is a good one. Thinking and fantasising about robots, we can ask the question where can we actually find humanity. If we have already accepted the idea that we are animals, can we accept the idea that we are robots?